Blaze tears through Salem landmark

A fire Wednesday afternoon badly damaged a Salem landmark and at least temporarily halted a business that had operated there for more than 50 years.

JOHN BARRY

A fire Wednesday afternoon badly damaged a Salem landmark and at least temporarily halted a business that had operated there for more than 50 years.

Firefighters from four departments fought the blaze at Snarski’s Liquors on Route 354. The store, built in the early 1960s, is owned by Raymond Snarski, 82. Despite his age, “I still work every day,” Snarski said.

“Ray and I were sitting inside,” Snarski’s friend Jim Rankin said. “His nephew (Jimmy Mrowka) stopped by and said the side of the building was on fire.”

The men got out of the building safely and at first tried to fight the fire themselves.

“Ray had taken a garden hose, while I got the kinks out,” Rankin said. “But there wasn’t enough water. The flames were moving too fast.”

Rankin called 911 and got patched through to the Gardner Lake Fire Department, a few hundred yards away on Route 354, built on land donated by Snarski’s parents in the 1960s. Snarski himself donated more land to the fire department last year.

Firefighters came quickly, Rankin said, but not quickly enough to stop the fire.

“I couldn’t believe how fast it was moving,” Rankin said.

In addition to Gardner Lake, the Salem, Oakdale and Colchester Hayward departments responded to the scene.

The only one in the building unaccounted for Wednesday afternoon was Snarski’s black cat he calls Kitty.

“I think the cat would have found a way to get out of there,” Rankin said.

The cause of the fire isn’t determined yet. Snarski speculated that it might have been a compressor that malfunctioned, because he heard something that sounded like an explosion near where he thinks the fire started.

“Something blew on the side,” he said.

The fire was contained in about an hour, but it smoldered for about an hour after that. Firefigfhters were called back again Wednesday night.

The walls of the one-story wooden building were still standing, but the ones on its northern half were burned and blackened, and the building’s interior appeared gutted. Firefighters hacked a huge hole in the roof, as well.

“It looks to me like this building is totaled,” Rankin said.

As the fire burned and the firefighters worked, more and more of Snarski’s family and friends gathered across the street to lend him their support. Snarski himself mostly sat surrounded by them on the grass outside the house where he was born and next door to the one where he lives now.

“This is his life,” Snarski’s daughter Sue Coffee said. “Everybody knows my dad. He’s kind of like the mayor in town. … All his friends are coming.”

“Every afternoon, people from every walk of life would stop in to see Ray and find out what’s going on,” acting First Selectman Bob Ross said. Ross said he was glad Snarski wasn’t hurt. “You certainly can’t replace a character like Ray Snarski.”